The September sun shone upon 206 girls with kilts at Montrose School. It was the beginning of the school year; however, a girl with black hair and brown eyes was missing. This girl is me, Shubo Yan ‘15. By the time school started, I was eating mooncakes with my family and spending my first Mid-Autumn Festival in Shanghai within the last four years. Please do not assume that I was trying to skip classes. I had a hard time enjoying the extra time with my family because I was anxious: Would I get back to Montrose? How much of my senior year would I miss? What about college?
As an international student, to enter America I need to have a VISA, which is document that indicates permission to enter, leave or stay in another country for a specific period of time. I started the VISA application process in July; I had two full months for the VISA process. The following steps are what to do to apply for VISA:
To get my VISA, I had to apply online, which took me about four hours. The DS-160 form takes around two hours to complete, including details about the school, my grades, my family, passport and so on. Completing the form leaves you with a serial number with a barcode associated with your DS-160 form. That serial number was my nemesis!
I then had two choices:
1. Send my passport directly to the American Embassy in China, and wait for the Embassy to deliver my passport with my new VISA in it.
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Print out all your application materials and go to an interview at a regional Embassy center in Shanghai. This option is a very complicated process: make an appointment, pass security checks and identity authentication. Because there are so many people want to go to America, you will need to wait in line for hours, and you cannot have any bags — no phone, no wallet, nothing.
As a returning second year student, I did not expect to do the interview. There are three purposes of interview: to know what you want to do in America, to know if you want to immigrate or not, and to know if you have enough money to go to America. For returning students, these three questions are very self- explanatory: to study, not immigrate, and I have paid tuition already. Because of that, I chose the first choice, which is to send my passport to the U.S. Embassy in China.
On Friday, August 29th, the last business day of that week, I received my passport from the bank, but to my surprise, I did not get my VISA in it. With my passport was a document that indicated they could not issue my VISA because I did not complete the interview! The form also indicated that I did not need to pay for the interview. Beside the form, there was also a copy of my DS-160 form in it. On the form, someone from the Embassy crossed out the original serial number with a ballpoint pen and wrote a new number under it.
I started to panic. I called the airport company to cancel my plane ticket on Sunday, wrote emails to my teachers about the plane cancellation, and made an interview appointment at the Embassy. I had to wait five more days. To make the interview appointment requires the DS-160 serial number. When I wrote my original serial number on the interview form, it jumped to the page of payment for 900 yuan (around 150 U.S. dollars); however, because the form that the Embassy returned me indicated that I do not need to pay for my interview, I became very confused. I looked through the materials the Embassy returned to me, and I saw the handwritten number under the crossed DS-160 serial number, so I typed the hand-written number into the appointment form. It worked this time. I was not required to pay for the interview, and my appointment was set for the next Wednesday at 9:00 A.M.
That Wednesday, I woke up early and arrived at the interview half an hour early because there are always a lot of people; you never know what might happen. I waited in line under the sun outside the building for half an hour, and I finally got to the entrance of the building. In order to enter the building, a candidate needs to show his or her DS-160 form and interview confirmation. When the officer saw my DS-160 form, he said this is not valid because it is hand-written. He then looked at my interview confirmation, and he said this DS-160 number is not valid because it is made up with numbers only. A valid DS-160 number should have both numbers and letters. Therefore, he did not let me go into the building.
I called the U.S. Embassy in China many times that day, but the phone was always busy. When I finally connected with an assistant and asked her the question, she said there might be an error in this, and she suggested I start a new DS-160 form and use the new form to make an appointment for the interview. I explained that I was already late for school, and asked if I can have the interview tomorrow, but she rejected me because only for business and for funerals of relatives can I get a priority interview. At this point, I had already missed the first day of school, and my heart was racing.
My interview was set for six days later on next Tuesday because all businesses are shut down during the Mid-Autumn Festival. Another four hours to fill out new forms, arranging another interview, getting up early, waiting in a long line, and this time I finally got inside the building and met the Embassy officer. Here are the questions the officer asked me:
“What do you want to do in America?”
“What is the name of your high school?”
“When did the school started?”
“… So why are you late?”
“… Okay, I got it. You passed.”
I felt a little upset because I had lost almost a week of school just because of this interview, and these were the only questions I had to answer?! I asked the officer if I can have the passport as soon as possible because I am really late, so she replied that she would try her best.
It took four more business days (with a weekend in between, so six days total) for my passport to come back to me. The passport was delivered to the bank for safety reasons. I went the bank, got my passport, and called the airline immediately for a flight to Boston for the next day.
Because Boston is so far from Shanghai, there is no direct flight from Shanghai to Boston. To fly to Boston, I had to change flights somewhere. My original flight ticket was a French airline that changed plane in Paris. I called France Airline, but tickets to Paris were sold out for the next two days. Because I wanted to get back to America as soon as possible, I ordered a new plane ticket from Delta that left the next day. The plane ticket cost around $1500 dollars. On top of this cost, the flight to Paris became invalid, and I did not have any money returned from France Airline. The VISA delays wasted the $1200 France Airline plane ticket and cost my family extra $1500 for the new plane ticket, but the most precious thing I lost is my first few days of my senior year.
After 20 hours of flying and layovers, I finally got to Boston at 11 P.M. on Sunday night, weary and sleepy. I slept in on the next day and went to Montrose at around 11 A.M — having missed 16 days of the school year.
So, that’s why I was late for school and that’s why when someone asked me why I was late, I always answered, “Oh… It’s a long story.” I believe it is also because there are so many international students coming to America nowadays, the system of the website might not work as smoothly as years before. The website also crashed once in July this year. Therefore, my suggestion to international students: Start to apply your VISA as early as possible, such like in June. Even in July, two months ahead of my returning date, something unexpected might happen.